Following the settlement of the Yuezhi (referred to by the Greeks as Tókharoi), the general area of Bactria comes to be called Tokharistan.

The territory of Tokharistan is identical with Kushan Bactria, including the areas of Surkhandarya, Southern Tajikistan and Northern Afghanistan.The first literary mentions of Tokharistan appear at the end of the fourth century in Chinese Buddhist sources (the Vibhasa-sastra).

However, the first mention of the Tókharoi appears much earlier, in the first century BCE, when Strabo mentions that "the Tókharoi, together with the Assianis, Passianis and Sakaraulis, took part in the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom" in the second half of the second century BCE.

Ptolemy also mentions a large Tokharian tribe in Bactria, describing the central role of the Tokharians among other tribes in Bactria.

(Through an accident of naming, the term "Tocharian" now commonly refers to a branch of Indo-European languages spoken in the Tarim Basin between the thirrd and ninth centuries CE, and quite distinct from the Bactrian language spoken by the Tókharoi.

)From the 1st century CE to the third century CE, Tokharistan is under the rule of the Kushans.

They ware followed by the Sassanids (Indo-Sassanids).

Later, in the fifth century, it is controlled by the Xionites and the Hephthalites but is reconquered by the Sassanids, it is later conquered by the Arabs and then the Mongols.